The UK’s Home Office is inviting tech suppliers to take part in a £60 million “market engagement” for an application that uses data from automated number plate recognition (ANPR) systems.

In an official notice published earlier this month, the department responsible for policing, immigration, and passports said it wanted to build an application to support live reporting and integration with the Home Office’s ANPR platform, which uses data for investigations and intelligence purposes.

ANPR systems are a debated topic in the UK, with some seeing them as an invasive means of controlling driver behavior, catching them out for minor infringements and gathering data, while others see them as a necessary measure to promote safe driving.

The Home Office has placed itself firmly in the “for” camp. “ANPR is a vital law enforcement capability used to detect and disrupt criminal activity, protect vulnerable individuals, and support national security efforts,” the procurement notice says.

The National ANPR Service Application and Associated Services the department is “exploring” is expected to include live-time alerting and control room deployment, search and reporting capabilities, and integration with external systems, although it does not name them.

However, it does specify integration with the Home Office’s National Strategic ANPR Platform (NSAP), which “brings together a constant stream of live data from all police forces and a few Law Enforcement Agencies,” according to the government’s major projects authority.

The National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) said: “This data is fed into a central database and allows for various interrogations to be made against the data, producing the results in the form of real-time alerts, near real-time searches and historic searching for vehicles of interest.”

NISTA found earlier this year that there had been a 30 percent variation on the central database budget because the data feed project was delayed by 12 months “due to issues identified resulting in an extended testing period.” The whole life cost of the project is expected to be £538.9 million.

The procurement of the new national application for ANPR data makes clear it won’t cover police ANPR cameras, communications links, management servers, firewalls, or other supporting infrastructure.

The Register asked the Home Office to comment. ®